


Start of something

by Mymlen



Series: Start of nothing [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 21:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15542394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mymlen/pseuds/Mymlen
Summary: Harry watches paralyzed and hidden under the invisibility cloak when Dumbledore offers to hide Draco from Voldemort, and there isn’t any part of him that doesn’t wish for Malfoy to accept.So what if he does? If, when he lowers his wand, he has another second before the rest of the Death Eaters burst through the doors, and he makes the right choice?





	Start of something

Harry watches paralyzed and hidden under the invisibility cloak when Dumbledore offers to hide Draco from Voldemort, and there isn’t any part of him that doesn’t wish for Malfoy to accept.

So what if he does? If, when he lowers his wand, he has another second before the rest of the Death Eaters burst through the doors, and he makes the right choice?

Either way, Dumbledore wouldn’t make it through the night. He was dying, and he wanted his death to be useful. So Snape still shows up, commits the murder he has promised, and drags Draco with him, fleeing Hogwarts with the other Death Eaters. Draco doesn’t hear a word of the exchange when Harry catches up with them; he was told to keep running, so he does.

 

-

 

While one side gathers at Hogwarts to mourn, the other flocks to Malfoy Manor to celebrate. Draco doesn’t participate and no one notices – he’s not important anymore; it is suddenly painfully clear to him he never was. He roams the empty parts of his house, he feels anxiousness gnawing in his chest as he wonders what he should do next. Technically, he did betray the Dark Lord, and he tries not to think about what would happen to him if all the monsters and murderers in his house were to find out.

But Dumbledore wouldn’t have offered protection he couldn’t give. He had planned to die that night, so someone else must have known, some people had to have been put into place, strings ready to be pulled. It might have been Snape, it might have been McGonagall. It doesn’t really matter how they do it, the important part is that the Order comes for Draco and his mother. They’re only at the Manor for a couple of days, then they are spirited away, disappearing underground, and both sides have other concerns at the time; the search for them is half-hearted at best.

 

-

 

Harry stays at Hogwarts for the funeral, then spends his last summer with the Dursleys. It’s slightly more bearable when he can keep in the back of his mind that he will never have to see them again. Or maybe it’s just that he can’t bring himself to care about their petty neglect and contempt after everything that’s happened. He keeps to himself in his room, scouring the papers for news of Voldemort, reading and re-reading obituaries on Dumbledore. He goes for walks around the neighbourhood on the days when the house is making him crazy, on nights when he can’t sleep. The pain of losing Dumbledore dulls to a slow, consistent ache, only to flare up occasionally, threatening to drag him into a pit of despair. But he carries the locket with him at all times now, letting it remind him of what lies ahead, what he has to do. He doesn’t have the luxury of letting himself fall apart, so he doesn’t. He stays at Privet Drive and he waits for the Order to come pick him up.

And then the Death Eaters are waiting for them when they do. Hedwig doesn’t make it. George loses an ear, and Moody is killed. It’s another reminder that people Harry had come to think of as immortal are anything but. He doesn’t feel like he needed any more reminders.

 Still, Ron has made it, Hermione has made it, and despite his guilt about pulling them into this, he is so grateful that they’re coming with him. They settle in at the Burrow, Harry in Ron’s room, Hermione in Ginny’s.

It’s strange living under the same roof as Ginny after they have broken up, strange to be that close to her and still miss her. They don’t spend a lot of time together and when they do, the others are always around too. They don’t talk about it, even if it’s always there in the air between them, but now and then he’ll look at her and see that look in her eyes she had at Dumbledore’s funeral, when he told her. That hard blaze of determination, all that will and power to keep moving and be strong and practical and brave. He knows she’s sad. He is too, about all the time they could have had under different circumstances, and now they can’t. But she isn’t angry. She understands. He will never stop being grateful for that.

From the day Harry arrives at the Burrow, Mrs Weasley is already fussing over the wedding and eventually everyone else gets caught up in the preparations too. Despite the oppressive darkness hanging over all of them, it really does promise to be a happy time, two small, golden weeks squeezed in between all the awfulness, and Harry is honestly looking forward to it.

He only gets a day, though. The evening after he has arrived at the Burrow, the promised simplicity of his time there is snatched away when they get the message of the new house guest who will be arriving the following morning.

“What?!” Ginny exclaims when it’s announced over dinner that evening.

“That slimy little-“ George is interrupted by Mr Weasley before he can finish:

“None of us are happy about it, but apparently Dumbledore had made plans to get him and his family out of Voldemort’s hands. He was supposed to be sent abroad, but something went wrong. They got his mother out two weeks ago and they’ve been shuttling him between safe houses since then.”

“Then why can’t he stay at one of those?” says Ron. “Why does he have to come _here_?”

“He’s deserted Voldemort, Ron, he’s in as much danger as-“

“Screw that! He’s the one who let the Death Eater’s into Hogwarts, he’s the reason Dumbledore is dead and the reason Bill’s-“ Ron stops and glances at his brother.

“It’s Dumbledore’s orders,” says Mr Weasley quietly.

“Fuck that.”

“Language, Ron,” says Mrs Weasley.

Harry doesn’t say anything. He remembers that moment in the astronomy tower, when Draco lowered his wand, the rush of relief he felt. And now he feels a stab of burning anger towards Dumbledore, like he hasn’t since he was fifteen – he wanted Draco to get out, of course he did, but not like this. His head is ringing with every single ugly thing Malfoy has ever said about Mrs Weasley or about the Burrow, about Ron's second-hand robes and Mr Weasley’s meagre Ministry position. He wanted him to be safe, he really did, but he doesn’t want him in this house, doesn’t want him to look at this warm, loving place, the last untainted place Harry has left, and make it all seem small.

But despite the angry protests of Ron and Ginny, of Fred and George, and the increasingly tired faces of the adults, there isn’t anything they can do about it. And the next morning, Hagrid arrives, a polyjuiced Draco and two black dragon skin suitcases in tow. Ron leaves the house in anger, slamming every door on the way and is gone for hours.

Mrs Weasley leads Draco to the attic, the only available space in the Burrow at this point. Harry has helped clear some stuff out of the way, helped her make up an old bed, set up a lamp and a dresser, so it’s sort of like a room. He doesn’t go up there with them when Draco arrives. As soon as they have passed the first landing he has no chance of hearing what they might say, but he has already made up his mind that he will not hesitate to kill Malfoy if he shows even the slightest sign of ingratitude.

But a day passes and then another, and Draco doesn’t come storming back down the stairs to demand a nicer living space or complain about the lack of luxury. They hardly see him at all. He stays in his attic room almost all the time. Harry isn’t planning on talking to him, he hardly looks at him either, though he feels Draco's eyes on him like a cold prickling every time they happen to be in the same room.

 

-

 

It has been weeks since Draco was separated from his mother, when they were both supposed to leave the country and only she made it out. They haven’t been in contact since. The people from the Order assured him it had gone well, so he tries to believe that.

 Since then he’s been moved from safehouse to safehouse, and he has been wondering about Potter. Of course he has. He’s been trying to piece together what his plan is from the fragments of conversation he’s overheard, but no one talks much when he’s around.

 He knew he should be grateful that they’re trying to get him out, it’s obvious that few of them want to, it’s just that it’s difficult to be grateful when you’re scared. And he is. All the time. It’s a different type of fear from living at the Manor – he’s escaped the oppressive terror of knowing he was sharing his home with monsters, that his life or death was entirely dependent on their whims, but it’s been replaced by the constant paranoia about when they will catch up with him. He tries to be grateful, but it’s so difficult to remember what one kind of fear felt like and it’s very easy to be consumed by the one that’s currently happening.

 Intellectually, he knows this is better. At least he won’t be asked to kill anyone any time soon, and he won’t have to watch people being killed for sport, but most of the time it doesn’t feel better. And maybe there is just a tiny hint of bitterness, just a sliver of disappointment. Maybe he has also allowed himself to hope that some of the self-hatred will go away when he’s made the right choice. And of course, it isn’t like that when you make that choice too late.

 But he’s fine, he’s holding it together.

 Until they tell him he’s being moved again. To the Weasley family home. Where Potter is currently staying.

 And for once he allows himself to resist a tiny bit. It doesn’t make a difference.

 

And so he moves into the small attic space in the Burrow, which they have actually tried to make cosy – it isn’t, but they obviously tried. And it’s just another of about a thousand things that day that makes him choke back tears. He feels raw. He feels empty, like he has been crying all day even though he hasn’t, not once. Every emotion is tangled up with another; the guilt is homesickness is anger is disappointment is guilt.

“Thank you,” he says, putting down his suitcase at the end of the bed. “This is… thank you.”

He really wants to scream. He’s not sure he could if he tried.

 

He’s instructed not to leave the house, so he doesn’t.

He’s invited to eat with them, but he doesn’t. Not just because of Potter, he likes to think he could have managed it if it was just Potter. But there’s a reason Draco wasn’t in Gryffindor. In fact, in this house of people fighting back, knowing what it might cost them, all of them willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater good, doing what is right rather than what is easy, he settles into what might be the first true narrative he has ever spun around himself: that he really is a coward. That he has never done anything but what was easy, the things that were made easy for him, walking the road that other people have paved, and being praised for walking it. So he doesn’t eat with them, because he is spineless and there is no way he could stay that long in a room where less than half the people in it are able to look at him. He deserves it, of course, but he would be punishing them as much as himself if he stayed.

Instead, he goes down there every meal, gets a plate of food and returns to his room. He doesn’t skip meals, because when he does, some Weasley kid inevitably appears sooner or later with a hateful look and a plate for him, and that’s actually worse.

 It only takes a couple of days for his head to become a weird space to be in. It does odd things to you not to talk to anyone or write to anyone and having so little contact with other people. Then he feels sorry for himself and then he gets mad at himself for feeling sorry for himself, it’s a wonderful little cycle. He can keep it going for hours.

 

He brings the plates down again himself, at night because he’s never actually washed dishes before and doesn’t want anyone to laugh at him if he’s doing it wrong. And one night, when he’s on his way back to his room, he hears low voices speaking urgently from the living room. He hesitates for a moment, then sneaks a little closer to the door. A floorboard creaks under his weight and he freezes.

“…hundreds of kids who should be kept safe and hidden and smuggled out!”

He takes another step, close enough to be able to peek through the door.

“It’s what Dumbledore wanted.”

There are four people in there. He can see Mrs Weasley sitting on the couch, Tonks and Mr Weasley stand by the fireplace. Lupin is hovering by one of the armchairs. They all look tired.

“Dumbledore isn’t here!” hisses Tonks. “What about your own children?”  
“Tonks, please,” Mr Weasley says, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“What? Don’t look at me like I don’t understand things when I am the only person here who’s being sensible!”

“Getting people out of England isn’t safe either,” says Lupin.

He has his back to the door, Draco can’t see his face.

“There are snatchers and possibly some of Voldemort’s own people too,” he continues. “Besides there aren’t a lot of purebloods left in Britain, he’s not going to want to kill them even if they’re against him. He seems to… care about Hogwarts. It might be the safest place for them.”

“Ginny is the only one who’s still in school, what about-“

“And the others are of age. They don’t want to go, Dora.”

Tonks runs a hand through her hair. Draco never met her before coming to this house. It has been the oddest thing knowing they were that closely related when she is so unlike anyone in his family, but for a second the exasperated look on her face reminds him awfully of his mother.

“So, what, we’re risking life and limb to save the Malfoy’s kid? Out of all the kids we could be helping? His parents made a choice, _they_ should deal with the consequences.”

Draco’s gut twists uncomfortably.

“What do you suggest we do?” asks Mrs Weasley sharply. “Send him back out there to be killed?”

“Of course not-“

“Well that’s the only other option, and awful as his parents may be, he is still a child in all of this.”

“Harry is a child too, he’s in more danger than anyone-“

“And he shouldn’t have to fight this fight either!”

Draco pulls away from the door. He doesn’t need to hear any more.

 

He heads back up the stairs, taking care to make as little noise as possible, but it isn’t easy when the old house insists on creaking and sighing all around him at every little movement. He’s halfway up the last flight of stairs when there’s a noise behind him. He spins around – and there is Potter on the landing below, looking straight up at Draco. He’s in his pyjamas, his feet are bare and his hair is a mess. His glasses are a bit askew, he still looks half asleep, but he has a wand in his hand and Draco finds his eyes drawn to it, nerves alive and prickling under his skin.

“I thought I heard someone,” Potter says.

Draco swallows hard. They’ve been living in this house together for almost a week, and Potter hasn’t looked at him once. They haven’t spoken at all, and Draco hasn’t allowed himself to think… or to want… but now he’s right there. And he has his wand with him. It’s a sudden and unwelcome reminder of all the things Draco has allowed himself to forget about what happened between them at Hogwarts; the things that were safe to forget when Draco thought he would never see him again, when he was daydreaming and longing and wallowing in his misery. Now whatever glorified, rosy fiction he had spun around the memories evaporates and the reality of their brief relationship is back at the forefront of his mind. He watches the wand in Harry’s hand and he remembers the bites, the shoves, the punches all too vividly; the fights that Potter seemed to need before he could allow anything else to happen. He remembers how quickly he would leave Draco afterwards, how hard his eyes were. He remembers the press of Potters fingers against the dark mark on his arm the last time they spoke before Draco finally betrayed Hogwarts.

“I was just bringing my plate down to the kitchen,” he says, calmly, as if his heart wasn’t hammering madly in his chest.

“Right.”

Potter doesn’t leave. He stays there on the landing, one hand resting on the bannister. It’s dark, Draco can only just make out his face.

“Did you want something?”

Potter hesitates, long enough that Draco starts to think he might not even answer.

“I saw you in the Astronomy Tower,” he says finally.

Draco’s heart stutters. He can almost feel the blood draining from his face.

“You… what?”

His eyes flick to the wand again.

“I saw you that night, when Dumbledore-“

“No!” Draco interrupts and there’s a petulant, childish ring to his voice. “No, you didn’t. No one was there until Snape showed up!”

“I was under my invisibility cloak. Dumbledore paralysed me, I couldn’t do anything, but…” Potter trails off.

He isn’t lying, though. He isn’t lying, but it still takes Draco a second to comprehend the words. A second to reshape the memory. A dark tower on a cold night, a flash of green, an old man falling limply over the battlements. Draco’s wand still pointed at him, even if he didn’t cast the spell. And Potter there, watching the whole thing. Draco feels like he’s falling. His skin is jittery, he wants to run, but he remains stiffly frozen in place.

“I wasn’t going to-“ he cuts himself off, swallows. His mouth is dry.  “I couldn’t- I didn’t want to-“

“I know,” Potter says. “I saw you lower your wand.”

The words hang there between them. Potter’s eyes are locked on him, his gaze is intense but Draco doesn’t know what it means. If this isn’t about revenge, then what the hell is it? His lungs feel too tight, he knows the words aren’t going to come out right, but he has to say them anyway. They fall like a stone from his lips.

“I’m so sorry.”

Potter looks away. Draco waits, but Potter doesn’t say anything. Draco hesitates, then turns away. His heart is still hammering. He can’t feel his knees. He takes another step up the stairs to return to his attic room. He has come to hate it these last few days, but suddenly he wants nothing more than to curl up in his squeaky bed and never talk to another person again.

“Don’t tell them.”

The voice is so quiet Draco almost thinks he might have imagined it, but when he glances back Potter’s eyes are fixed on him again.

“They already know what I did,” Draco says.

“No, I mean… you can’t tell them about the other thing. With us.”

Draco almost laughs. He can feel it rising through him, ugly and hysterical, when it becomes clear that that is actually what Potter wanted to talk about. Not the astronomy tower, not Draco’s murder attempts or his desertion from the Death Eaters. This is about fifth year and all the stuff Draco had almost started to believe was only in his head. It’s too absurd. To hear it brought up now, like this, when they’re at war; when the adults are downstairs talking about shipping Draco off to safety while Harry and their own children stay here and fight; when he is standing there with his wand in his hand, saying that he knew Draco was responsible for Dumbledore’s death, and somehow, it’s still about what they did an eternity ago at Hogwarts.

But the laugh dies in his chest, never making it out into that dark, quiet house around them.

“Of course not,” he says instead.

And Harry nods, like that’s the end of it. He leaves, disappearing back into the bedroom he shares with Ron, leaving Draco lingering on the stairs before he too pulls himself together and makes his way back to his bed.

 

-

 

It hadn’t actually been that hard for Harry to ignore Malfoy’s presence at the Burrow. He rarely showed his face anyway, and Harry had enough to worry about to keep his mind occupied. Ron was pissed for almost two days, mostly on behalf of Hermione, but it eventually faded when Harry only participated half-heartedly in his contempt and Hermione remained entirely reasonable and unfazed. Fred and George gave up on trying to pull any pranks on him after Mrs Weasley caught them with a whole arsenal of stink bombs and yelled at them for an entire hour. After that, his presence was hardly commented on, except for the occasional, muttered aside of someone wondering aloud about what the hell Dumbledore had been thinking, or a concerned remark from Mrs Weasley about how skinny Draco was. Most of the time, Harry could almost forget he was even there.

 But then he had to go and talk to him, like an absolute idiot. He could have just stayed in his bed and ignored him; he knew it was Malfoy out on the stairs, he had heard him coming down from the attic every night since he arrived at the Burrow, but no, he just had to get out of bed and talk to him, just had to bring up Dumbledore and all the shit before that, and now Malfoy’s presence is impossible to ignore. He can’t stop staring at him. He just wanted to assure himself that Malfoy wouldn’t tell anyone, so he could stop worrying about it, because it had been there, that small, nagging voice in the back of his head whispering _what ifs_ when he passed him in the hall or heard his footsteps upstairs. It seems ridiculous now, of course. Who the hell would Malfoy have told? He doesn’t talk to anyone at the Burrow, just keeps to himself, and Harry was doing just fine ignoring him, pretending as if staying in the same house as him and Ginny while trying to focus on finding horcruxes wasn’t already a slow kind of torture. But now they’ve talked, and suddenly he’s impossible to ignore. It’s like they’re sharing a secret again, and now every time Malfoy comes down for meals, it’s like he sucks all the air out of the room, and Harry is feeling that awful pull again, feeling himself gravitating towards him, the way he did back at Hogwarts. He finds himself wishing for the thousandth time that he could go back and do things differently. He should have known even back then that it would come back to haunt him. He probably did know. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he had wanted to be haunted. Or maybe he just hadn’t really believed he would live past 15.

 Ron and Hermione notice it too, Ron asking if something’s up with him and Malfoy, Hermione saying he should “just ignore him”, as if it were that easy.

 And he can’t tell them anything.

 

-

 

Two days before the wedding, the Delacours arrive at the Burrow and the general stress and excitement about the wedding increases even more, half of it now playing out in rapid French. Harry is surprised when Mrs Weasley corners him to ask how he wants to celebrate his birthday – he hasn’t considered it at all; they all have more important things to think about.

“Seventeen, after all, it’s an important day,” she says.

It takes Harry a second to realize that she isn’t referring to his mother’s protection, or the trace being lifted, all the things that have made Harry’s coming of age the final barrier keeping them from beginning the search for the horcruxes.

“I don’t want a fuss,” he says quickly. “Really, Mrs Weasley, just a normal dinner would be fine… it’s the day before the wedding… please, don’t go to loads of trouble.”

She smiles and pats him on the cheek.

“Don’t be silly, Harry.”

 

-

 

That night, he lies awake again, like he’s been doing so often lately. He listens to Ron’s snores and the creaking of the house around him. He finds himself listening for Malfoy’s quiet footsteps on the stairs. He can’t be sure what time it is when he hears them but it seems later than usual.

 Sleep still feels unattainably far away even after Malfoy has come down and gone back up, and Harry lies awake, eyes open, looking at the dark ceiling, debating whether or not he should go.

 It’s fifth year all over again.

 Except it isn’t at all, they’re much older now, he should be mature about this, he ought to be able to leave it alone.

 But in the end, he goes anyway.

 

-

 

It’s past midnight when Draco hears the knock on his door. The summer nights are still bright, but this late the last of the blue twilight is gone, the attic is dark and the light by his bed casts long shadows crawling over the floorboards at the feet of all the rubbish and leftover furniture that occupies the space Draco doesn’t.

He was expecting Harry to confront him again after their midnight run in on the stairs. He was bracing himself for that second conversation, but then a couple of days passed, and it didn’t happen and he started to doubt his certainty. Maybe Potter really had said all he wanted to say. Maybe Draco was just imagining the stares, the thickening air between them. It’s too late for anyone else to come to his room, but part of him still hopes that he’s wrong.

 But of course, it is Potter. He knocks and then lets himself in. He closes the door behind him but stays hovering by it, as if afraid of what will happen if he strays too far into the room.

“We need to talk,” he says and then doesn’t proceed to talk about anything.

They don’t need to talk. At this point, there is nothing to say. Potter has his girlfriend and his mission, he doesn’t want revenge and Draco isn’t asking for forgiveness. Potter doesn’t want him here, nobody wants him here, but that’s how it has to be. It’s temporary. And if Potter would just leave him alone, they should be able to manage fine. Instead he is here again, in Draco’s space, with his stupid hair and his stupid face and his stupid muggle clothes.

“I’m leaving soon,” he says and Draco feels an awful tug in his chest.

Those five feet between them feel like an ocean.

“So I’ve heard.”

He wants to apologize again.

He never wants to talk about it again.

He wants to touch him, just for a second. Tonight, Potter doesn’t look angry or vengeful; he just looks tired, worn down. It’s too easy to forget in this quiet corner of the house that they aren’t really alone, that there are Weasleys and Order members on every floor below them, that they aren’t kids anymore and the things they do now matter.

 If this were 5th year, Draco would know where to go from here. They had an easy script back then, one that allowed for a simple way around all the things they don’t need to talk about.

"I’m glad they got you out,” Potter says finally. “I’m not- It’s not easy that you’re here, but… I don’t want you to think that I would rather you were still with Voldemort. You did the right thing, you know.”

Draco snorts.

“Did quite a few wrong things first.”

It’s not a fair response, even if it’s honest. He shouldn’t ask Potter to insist on forgiving him and it’s not like he actually wants him to take it back.

“Can I see it?” Potter asks, nonsensically, and Draco frowns.

Potter doesn’t explain, but then Draco notices where he’s looking. He touches the edge of his sleeve and Potter’s eyes follow the movement and Draco feels cold all over again, but he nods, and undoes the button on his wrist. He rolls his sleeve back, and Harry finally uproots himself from his spot by the door, crossing the space between them until he’s standing right in front of him. Draco holds out his arm and Potter grabs it. They stand close, their foreheads are almost touching. Harry’s head is bowed, Draco can’t see his expression well; he isn’t sure he wants to. He can hear him breathing. He can smell the scent of his hair. He doesn’t want to look at the ugly thing on his arm, but then Potter runs a thumb over the scarred, uneven skin, and he has to. Potter traces it with his finger, from the skull just below Draco’s elbow, along the snake coming out of its mouth, to the ugly head ending at his wrist. It doesn't move; still, there is a sense that the blackened skin is writhing, pulling at the paleness of Draco’s arm around it.

“Still happy they got me out?” Draco whispers.

Harry drags his eyes away from the mark to look at him.

“I knew it was there.”

“Yeah,” Draco says. “You did.”

Draco is holding himself rigidly, Harry must be able to feel how tense he is. His hold on Draco’s arm is loose, he could pull away if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. And Draco knows he has to ask, even if he can feel his throat closing up around the words, even if he doesn’t want to know.

“Is that what it was about back then? That last time?”

Everything that happened between them happened when they were fifteen, except for that one lapse in sixth year, when everything was going to shit. Potter tried to kill him and Draco thought he had been figured out, but no aurors ever showed up to take him to Azkaban. No Death Eaters came to take him to the Dark Lord. Potter hadn’t snitched, and Draco couldn’t ask him why, and the one time he got a chance to, they made out in an empty classroom instead. And Potter found the mark on Draco’s arm. And he still didn’t tell anyone.

“You knew it was there,” he says. “So why did you- did you just want to make sure? Figured you could bear fooling around one last time, you know, get a chance to feel around…“

It is the story he has convinced himself he believes, the one that has to be true, the only logical explanation. Draco is aware that fifth year wasn’t good, that whatever they had back then was deeply fucked up, but that last time, when Potter apologized, when he stayed, that’s the memory that’s been festering in Draco’s mind, the one that all those ill-advised threads of hope are tied to, even when he tells himself he knows better.

“No,” Harry says.

And Draco opens his mouth to object, to clarify, because clearly Potter didn’t understand what he was asking. His face is inches away from Draco’s, and he looks angry and tired and scared, all of them at once, a complicated expression Draco might not have been able to read if he didn’t know the feeling so well.

“No,” Harry repeats, “it wasn’t about that. I thought… I was pretty sure you had taken the mark, and I did want to know, but that wasn’t why I… It wasn’t about that, alright?”

Draco doesn’t remember making the decision to kiss him. There’s a glip of terror in his chest when their lips meet and for a second Harry remains frozen. But then his lips move, he kisses him back. His hand buries itself in Draco’s hair, pulling him closer. He finally releases Draco’s arm to reach for his hip instead. Draco takes a step back and Harry follows, the back of Draco’s knees hit the bed and he falls onto the mattress, and Harry follows. He climbs over him, holding himself above Draco, supporting his weight with one hand, while the other runs up Draco’s side as he keeps kissing him, and Draco is clinging to him, desperately wanting him closer. Ragged breaths escape between them, the bed creaks with every movement, springs screaming when Harry shifts his weight to kiss Draco’s neck, his collarbone, and Draco drags him back to his mouth so he can kiss him again, and he keeps running his fingers through that thick mess of hair, again and again. He’s out of breath and half hard, he isn’t sure when that happened. He presses his face into Harry’s neck, breathing heavily, and then he feels Harry’s fingers at his waist, warm hands brushing his skin as Harry pushes his shirt up.

“I missed you,” Draco whispers and then wishes instantly that he had kept his mouth shut, because Harry suddenly goes rigid.

He pulls his hands back, sits back up, still in Draco’s lap, but only for a second. Draco reaches out to touch him and Harry moves away.

“Fuck,” he mutters, still out of breath.

He climbs off the bed, stands up, straightens his shirt. He’s looking anywhere but at Draco.

“You’re leaving?” Draco asks and it sounds pathetic and desperate.

He’s still on his bed, his clothes tangled, his hair probably a total mess, watching Potter pull away from him exactly like he used to, and Draco feels just as small and humiliated and ridiculous as he did when he was fifteen.

“Yeah,” Harry says.

He glances back at Draco but looks away again quickly.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not.”

“Because of your girlfriend?” Draco asks, because of course there are a thousand reasons, but that one is the simplest.

Potter winces.

“Ginny and I broke up,” he says.

“I see.”

“It’s complicated,” Potter says, even though Draco didn’t ask.

He doesn’t give a fuck about Weasley. He shifts on the bed, reaching for the watch on his bedside table, the bedsprings creak and wail.

“It’s only a little past one,” Draco says. He’s gotten his voice back under control. He sounds cool, uncaring. Over it. “You’ve still got oceans of time to get your beauty sleep.”

“Look, this was stupid,” Potter snaps. “We can’t- we’re not fifteen anymore.”

“I know,” Draco says lightly, as if it makes no difference to him whether Harry wants to kiss him or not.

“I should probably… I should head back downstairs.”

Draco shrugs.

“I guess you should.”

 

Harry walks back to the door and Draco watches him. He rests his arms on his knees, the watch still dangling between his fingers.

“Hey, Potter,” he calls, and Harry stops with his hand on the door and glances back at him.

“What?”

“Happy birthday,” he says.

Harry’s grip tightens around the handle and he jerks the door open.

 

He leaves, closing the door carefully behind him. Draco listens to his footsteps receding down the stairs. He drops the watch on the floor, because fuck precious heirlooms. He curls over his knees, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fuck Potter. He wants to die and he wants to kill him and he curses him under his breath until his throat is too tight for any words to make their way out.

 

-

 

Harry wakes on his seventeenth birthday with a tight feeling in his gut and a sense of looming disaster. It’s a familiar feeling, so similar to the constant restless fear of the vague threat of the mission ahead of them. Except this morning the general anxiety is accompanied by vein-crushing shame that makes it impossible for him to even look at Ron or anyone else offering congratulations.

He tries to push it down, to forget about it. He left, that’s the important part. He left and nothing happened.

He tries to soak up Ron’s good mood. He yields to his badgering and uses _accio_ to retrieve his clothes and later to summon things at breakfast when Ron insists no one is allowed to pass him anything. It does feel great to finally be allowed to use magic again.

The presents are great too – the watch from Mr and Mrs Weasley almost makes him cry. There’s a new sneakoscope from Hermione and a huge box of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes from Fred and George, and he feels like such an arse for not just being properly there and happy about all of it.

And then Ron pulls him aside with a self-satisfied grin to give him his gift in private. Harry unwraps the book and it’s like a punch to the gut – it takes him a second to get himself under control enough to realize that of course this isn’t some sick joke, and for a moment he just stares stupidly at the title: _Twelve fail-safe ways to charm witches!_ Ron doesn’t notice Harry’s moment of dumb horror, instead rambling excitedly about how brilliant it is, and Harry nods and flips through it, and then it actually is funny, especially when he notices how some of the headlines correlate eerily with Ron’s oddly changed behaviour around Hermione.

And like the rest of Harry’s summer, his birthday is a tricky balancing act between the warmth and normalcy of the Burrow, of life moving on, and then the war looming over all of them, breathing down their necks: There’s breakfast and presents, Fred and George grumbling when Mrs Weasley volunteers them to do the dishes afterwards, there’s a game of quidditch in the garden, and then lunch is interrupted by the arrival of the Minister for Magic.

Harry ends up on a couch flanked by Ron and Hermione as the Minister reads Dumbledore’s will to them. It’s a solemn moment, a harsh reminder of their loss, and Harry wishes he wasn’t so angry. Despite the Minister being one of the last people Harry wanted to see that day, he does feel a spark of hope when he finds out why he is there – he thinks for a moment that Dumbledore’s will might hold some answers, maybe a clue about where they should start. And of course, it doesn’t. It’s just another nonsensical riddle from the old headmaster, this time passed to them from beyond the grave.

 

-

 

Hermione hardly puts down the book the rest of the day.

“But why would he give you a book of fairy tales?” Ron asks. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Well he wouldn’t have given it to me if it wasn’t important,” Hermione insists.

Harry wishes he could feel that certain about Dumbledore’s intentions.

 

-

 

It’s only when the Minister has left the house that Ginny gives Harry her present.

“I couldn’t think of what to get you,” she says, closing the door to her room behind them. “I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you. So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.”

“I think dating opportunities will be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.”

Ginny smiles.

“There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,” she says, and then she is kissing him, and Harry is kissing her back, and for a moment she is the only thing in the world, and everything seems alright.

 

-

 

Harry comes of age at the burrow and Dumbledore leaves him the snitch for no apparent reason. The trace is lifted and the last barrier keeping them from going to hunt for horcruxes is gone. Of course, they will stay for the wedding, but then the time is up. One more day.

 Part of him is itching to go. He can feel Ron and Hermione getting restless too. The longer they wait the more time they have to dwell on all the things they don’t know. They aren’t ready, but they never will be. Harry wears the fake horcrux under his shirt, and it’s a constant reminder that they are already one step behind.

And they don’t talk about it. They talk about the wedding and about Harry’s birthday, and take turns to retreat and read the somber news in the Prophet. There is hardly anything useful in it anymore, but everyone still finds time to scour the censored articles for any information about which families have disappeared, who has gone underground, who has been taken. Lupin puts down the newspaper and Mr Weasley picks it up. Harry notices the way hushed conversations stop when he enters a room and it seems so stupid and pointless that they are still trying to shield him. He’s the one who will be going after the horcruxes, the one who will eventually have to kill Voldemort, so what is the point in not talking about it?

He wonders if this is what it was like when his parents got married – if they also had to carve out every inch of normalcy and happiness from the closing darkness of the world around them.

He doesn’t see Draco the whole day. He stays in the attic and doesn’t even show up for meals. Harry doesn’t know what to make of that.

Lupin is the last one still awake in the evening when Harry finally heads upstairs. He can hear him in the kitchen. There’s a sound of cabinets opening, the clink of glass.

 

Harry hesitates on the landing where the hallway leads down to Ron’s room, but only for a moment.

The last flight of stairs is narrow, they creak and groan loudly with every step. It’s late, but Malfoy is probably still awake. He doesn’t seem to sleep much.

Harry isn’t sure why he goes up there. He thinks it might have something to do with Lupin drinking firewhisky alone after everyone has gone to bed. Or with the way Hermione sighed when she finished her book of fairytales and flipped back to the first page and started over. It has something to do with Mrs Weasley asking him to help out with chores or wedding preparations every time he tries to read the Prophet, and with the heavy weight of the locket against his chest when he moves. It has something to do with Ginny kissing him and the way it felt like they were saying goodbye. 

 He knocks on the door to the attic room and waits. There’s a moment of silence, then the sound of footsteps. The door is cracked open. It’s dark on the landing but the light is on inside, Malfoy is lit from behind and it’s hard to make out his expression. He is leaning against the doorjamb and keeps his hand on the handle, blocking the opening.

“Potter,” he says, tonelessly.

He sounds wholly unsurprised by Harry’s presence.

“What do you want?”

“Can I come in?” Harry asks.

Draco raises an eyebrow.

“Why?”

He sounds pissy and obnoxious, and something settles inside Harry. It feels familiar. He knows how to talk to this version of Draco, knows the routine push and shove of their interactions. So he puts a hand on the door and pushes it back.

“Come on, Malfoy, don’t be an arse,” he says, and Draco glares daggers at him, but he still steps back enough to let Harry inside.

He keeps a hand on the door though.

“I’m serious,” he says. “What the hell do you want?”

Harry shrugs.

“You haven’t been downstairs all day.”

Draco rolls his eyes.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin your birthday party.”

“That’s considerate of you.”

Harry glances around the room. They’re standing by the door, which Draco is still holding open, but now more like he has forgotten about it than as if he expects Harry to leave.

“I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore,” Malfoy says coolly. “You were very determined when you left last night. Did you change your mind?”

Harry flinches because – because no, that isn’t why he is there, but of course, that’s what Malfoy would assume. It’s been hours since he stood in Ginny’s sunlit room and they joked about the lack of dating opportunities on a horcrux hunt, but he can still recall the feeling of her hand on his neck, the press of her soft lips, the flowery smell of her that was everywhere in the room.

“No,” he says. “I didn’t.”

“Then why the fuck are you here?” Malfoy snaps, and Harry is surprised at how angry he sounds – not his usual, aloof mockery, but a genuine edge to his voice.

And he hesitates, because he doesn’t know how he actually expected this to go. Maybe he came up here because he is spilling over with restless, angry energy and part of him wanted a fight with Malfoy, but he also wanted… Malfoy has grown smaller since arriving at the burrow. He has become even paler than usual. There are dark circles under his eyes and there is an unfamiliar scruffiness to his appearance – his hair is getting too long, his clothes are crumpled. He moves through the house like he is trying to blend into the wallpaper. Even in 6th year when Harry knows he was falling apart, he still looked more put together than he does now. He shouldn’t have kissed him, shouldn’t have opened that door again. There had been a terrible look on Malfoy’s face, just for a moment, when Harry was about to leave, and maybe part of him just he wanted to make sure he was okay. Which isn’t exactly something he can tell him.

Malfoy huffs impatiently.

“Why don’t you fuck off?” he says. “Go snuggle with your girlfriend instead.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Harry says reflexively.

Because she isn’t. Not technically. Even if today made it feel like perhaps she still was, or a promise that she would be again. When the war is over. If they both make it.

“Oh, right I forgot,” Malfoy sneers. “ _It’s complicated_.”

“Yeah,” Harry snaps back at him, “it is.”

Malfoy gestures to the open door.

“Then go talk through your relationship problems with one of your actual friends, because I’m not doing this with you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Didn’t you? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you came up here again, in the middle of the night, and I don’t know if you’ve managed to get yourself obliviated since last night, but I haven’t. And I couldn’t care less about your _complications_ with the Weasley girl, I just don’t feel like being your rebound fuck or whatever this is while you figure things out with her.”

Harry reaches out and pushes the door shut.

“Bloody hell, will you keep it down?” he hisses. “I told you, that’s not what I’m here for.”

“Right,” Malfoy says bitterly, “you came here to _talk_ then? Because that’s something we do?”

“Look, maybe I just wanted to check on you, alright?” he says.

Malfoy rolls his eyes.

“Fuck you, Potter.”

“How is that unreasonable? When was the last time you looked in a mirror? You look like shit, Malfoy, even Mrs Weasley is concerned about you, and it’s not like she has much reason to care.”

Malfoy lets out a sharp breath that isn’t really a laugh.

“What, I don’t want to fool around with you, so now I’m ugly?”

“I was _worried_ about you, you arrogant prick!”

“Why? You made it pretty fucking clear last night that you don’t want anything to do with me!”

Harry’s hands are curled into fists. He wants to punch that stupid expression off of Malfoy’s face; wants him to stop making everything so fucking difficult. Of course, he was an idiot to think things with Malfoy could be simple, that they could have any kind of goodbye that wasn’t ugly.

“Malfoy-“ he starts, barely calm, but Draco cuts him off:

“Look, I get that you hate me, alright?” he says, voice pulled tight as a wire. “You have made that abundantly clear, and I’m not asking you to change that. You have every reason to hate me. I’m just saying that I can’t do this with you, and you pretending that you _care_ , that this _meant_ something to you, it just… I wish you would stop. I’m asking you to _please stop_.”

“Of course I care!”

He can’t believe he has to say it, that he has to explain that to Malfoy. As if it hasn’t been years since it was as simple as _hating him_. Everything between them is so tangled, so twisted up in Harry’s head, with shame and secrecy and guilt. He doesn’t even know what Malfoy is to him anymore, he’s not sure he wants to know, but hating him simply for being the bully he was, for being a spoiled kid, that feels like a distant childhood memory, like something that happened to someone else. These weeks at the burrow, Malfoy’s presence has been both an all-consuming haunting and utterly insignificant next to prophecies and missions and death and heavy responsibility.

But Malfoy’s face just curls into a disdainful sneer, painfully familiar and after all this time painfully transparent too; on his gaunt face, there is hardly a trace of genuine arrogance.

“Please Potter,” he drawls. “I know this was never anything other than some sort of masochistic… I don’t know, ‘fuck you’ to all the things people expected you to be.”

And that might be true, but it is also so fucking unfair.

“And it wasn’t for you?” Harry snaps.

“I was in love with you, you moron!” Draco snarls and everything inside Harry goes still.

Whatever angry thing he was about to say dies in his mouth. He becomes suddenly aware of how quiet the attic is around them.

Harry opens his mouth and closes it again when no words present themselves. For a second there is just silence as this new truth hangs between them, as the words reverberate in Harry’s skull, reshaping distant memories of slips of paper, whispered times, empty classrooms.

“What?” he finally manages, and Malfoy’s eyes narrow.

“You didn’t know?” he asks.

“I-“ Harry begins but Draco cuts him off, face twisting into an ugly smile.

“Of course you didn’t,” he breathes and it’s almost a laugh.

He rakes his fingers through his hair and grins up at the ceiling.

“Of course fucking not – Merlin, I spent _weeks_ trying to figure out what was going on in your head, but of course you-“

He looks back at Harry.

“Did it never even cross your mind to wonder why _I_ was doing it?” he asks, voice thick with disbelief, but the truth is, it didn’t.

Harry spent so much energy trying not to examine why _he_ was seeking out Malfoy, what exactly he was looking for when he snuck out to meet him. He hated the part of himself that for some reason wanted to see him and there was no desire to examine that want any closer. He can remember every single excuse that went through his head that year, he’s been rehearsing them daily since Malfoy showed up at the Burrow; he had excuses but not a _reason_. It never occurred to him that Malfoy might.

“How was I supposed to know?” he asks.

Malfoy raises his eyebrows and his expression is still more disbelief than anger, even if his voice is scathing:

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that I spent half a year with your dick in my mouth might have been a clue-“

“About what?” Harry snaps. “What was that supposed to tell me, Malfoy? I just assumed you were as fucked up as I was, I didn’t have a bloody clue why I was doing any of it, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, it’s not like _we_ even talked about it, so how the hell was I supposed to know what was going on in your head? You never said anything, you never said you wanted it to be any different!“

“Because I knew you didn’t!”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ve got eyes, Potter, the whole school knew about you and Chang. What was I supposed to say?”

“What, _Cho_? You want to make this about her?”

“It is about her! I’m not an idiot, Potter, I know how desperately you want things to be _normal_. You just want someone who isn’t tied up in any of this shit, you want things to be nice and uncomplicated and _easy_ , and I get that, I really do, but that just makes it fucking unbearable that you won’t leave me alone, when clearly all you want is to get married and make little Weasley-babies with your pretty girlfriend!”

“She’s not my girlfriend!”

Draco laughs his hollow laugh again.

“As if that matters,” he says, and Harry hates the bitter knowing in his voice, hates the resigned way he talks, like he has this all figured out while Harry’s head is screaming from trying to keep up.

“You can’t stand yourself for being around me. The only reason you’re still doing this is because you have her to go back to, to make you feel good about yourself.”

Harry feels like his heart is trying to crawl up his throat, his mouth is full of bitter acid and Draco’s words are still echoing in his head: _I was in love with you. I was in love with you. I was in love with you._

“You were in the inquisitorial squad,” he says tightly. “You were a Death Eater.”

“Does it matter?” Draco says coolly.

“Of course it does!”

“But not to you, right? I know I’ve done some fucked up things, and I never expected you to forgive me, but then there you were, telling me you didn’t blame me for Dumbledore’s death, and yesterday you were practically making out with my Dark Mark, and for a second I thought… For a second I forgot that you sent my father to Azkaban and that you tried to murder me, and I thought that maybe you cared. But then you fucking left anyway.”  
Draco looks away. His hands are curled tightly into fists and Harry watches his chest rise and fall rapidly, watches him swallow hard.

“I made the right choice, Potter,” he says with strangled voice, still not looking at Harry. “It took a while and I made so many mistakes, but I’m here now.”

“Draco-“ Harry begins, but Draco shakes his head vigorously and takes a step back.

“No, fuck this,” he says. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Harry says. “Back in sixth year. I told you. I didn’t know what the spell did.”

Draco grimaces, something between a grin and an eye roll, but he keeps his gaze fixed on the far corner of the room, as if turning his face away from Harry will keep him from noticing the tears in his eyes.

“Merlin, this is pathetic,” he mutters. “I knew there was never a chance it was real.”

“That’s not true, though,” Harry says quietly, and then presses on when Draco opens his mouth to protest: “It isn’t! I’m not saying everything would have been different if I’d known, alright? I don’t know that it would. Like I said, things were a mess back then, and honestly, they still are. But it wasn’t nothing to me. And I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out.”

He wishes he didn’t sound so bitter, but he can feel himself getting angry again at the unfairness of it all. There are so many things he has to do, that people need him to do, this is just another reminder that his life isn’t really his own and maybe it never was. It was the same with Ginny – they hardly had any time together, he had even less time to figure out his feelings about her than he has had to figure out his feelings about Draco, and then he didn’t even get to break up with her for normal reasons. And he’ll probably be dead by the end of this year if he doesn’t figure out a way to kill Voldemort, so does it even matter? Does it even matter which one of them he would choose, or that he didn’t know until now that choosing Draco was an option, when it’s so unlikely that all three of them will make it through the war?

“Why did you and Weasley break up?” Draco asks, as if reading Harry’s mind.

“It’s complicated.”

Draco scoffs.

“Yes, I gathered as much.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It was for some stupid noble reason, wasn’t it?” Draco asks, a trace of a grin on his lips, and Harry nearly flinches at the words, a perfect echo of what Ginny said at Dumbledore’s funeral.

Of course, Draco doesn’t know that, he wasn’t there. It’s just a coincidence. A deeply fucked up coincidence that makes Harry want to scream or put his fist through a wall or just get the fuck out of there and never look back.

“I’m leaving soon,” he says instead. “And she’s going back to Hogwarts. Mr Weasley said there would be Death Eaters there this year. At the school.”

He’s been trying not to think about that. It makes it seem ridiculous that he isn’t going back – he knows he needs to find the horcruxes, to stop Voldemort, but if there are going to be Death Eaters at Hogwarts, people will get hurt. It will be worse than anything Umbridge ever did. He ought to be there, and he can’t.

“She’ll be in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want her to become a target because of me.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Draco says flatly. “I’m sorry to break it to you, Potter, but ever since the redheads adopted you as one of their own, I’m pretty sure they’ve all become targets, whether you’re sleeping with them or not.“

“You’re such a fucking arsehole.”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault, they’re just too Gryffindor for their own good. You know they would all happily die for you.”

“I don’t want them to.”

“But that isn’t why you broke up with her.”

Harry slumps back against the wall and buries his fingers in his hair. He is so tired. Draco is watching him and the air still feels fraught between them. Draco still looks like he’s falling apart and Harry thinks he probably is too, except he knows he can’t, and maybe that’s why he tells him.

“I just don’t want her to wait for me,” he says. “I don’t know when I’ll come back, I don’t even know _if_ I’ll come back. So maybe if she doesn’t feel like she has to wait for me, it’ll hurt less if I don’t.”

“That’s a stupid reason too.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what happens if you do make it? Both of you?”

“I don’t know.”

Draco nods. He hesitates for a long moment before asking:

“And what if I survive too?”

Harry takes a deep breath.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Okay.”

He also doesn’t know what it means that he reaches for Draco then, or what it means when Draco leans in and kisses him, but it’s a different kiss this time. It’s soft, not the rushed, exhilarating kisses of the night before, of two weeks under the same roof with a quivering secret between them. Not the violent, desperate tilt of their fifth year headless, visceral escape from everything that was happening elsewhere in their lives. It’s soft. It’s Harry’s hand resting against Draco’s jaw, holding him in place but not pulling him closer. It’s Draco’s hands on Harry’s waist and his breath warm against his lips, the slow and careful kisses of people in lives where time isn’t running out. It’s a reminder of what their relationship isn’t, what this thing between them, whatever it is, has never been. It’s the thing Harry wants so badly and knows he can’t have.

Draco is the first one to pull away.

“We’re not doing this again,” he breathes.

The _again_ is a lie – they’ve never done this before. Harry drops his hand and takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says.

And then it seems like there isn’t much else to say after that.

They stand too close together in the quiet and the darkness of the attic room at the Burrow, not touching and not talking. Harry listens to Draco’s quiet breathing. He feels the weight of the fake horcrux around his neck. The wedding is tomorrow, and after that he and Ron and Hermione are leaving, and all of it is so incredibly unfair.

And they can’t stay there forever, so eventually Draco takes another step back, and Harry takes a deep breath and heads for the door.

 

-

 

“I’m not going to France,” Draco says, watching Harry from the doorway as he starts down the stairs.

Harry doesn’t tell him that he should, just like he hasn’t told Ron or Hermione or Ginny. There is a point where you can’t run anymore, or at least where you have to stop telling other people to if you can’t stand the thought of doing it yourself.

“Be careful, then,” he says instead. “Please don’t die.”

And Draco smiles the smallest of smiles.

“You too, Potter,” he says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> All my love to [Marlene](https://amorphine.tumblr.com/) for being the best beta and giving reliably excellent feeback every single time.


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